Aaron Brown, Columnist

JPM Coin Is the Wildest Big Bank Idea in Many Years

JPMorgan is making a bold attempt to gain a first-mover advantage in a potentially lucrative new service.

March 21, 2019 at 5:00 PM UTC

Aaron Brown is a former head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is also an active crypto investor, and has venture capital investments and advisory ties with crypto firms. He is the author of the soon-to-be-released "Wrong Number."

JPMorgan is making a bold leap into the new age of banking.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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It’s been a month since JPMorgan issued a press release announcing JPM Coin, and everyone is as confused now as they were then. No one seems to agree what JPM Coin is, what it’s intended to do, what it competes with, or whether it is a vote of confidence in cryptocurrencies, an attempt to hijack crypto ideas in evil big bank ways, or an unremarkable traditional ledger dressed in crypto clothes for publicity purposes.

I think JPM Coin is a bold attempt to gain a first mover advantage in a potentially lucrative new banking service. It shares more DNA with Bitcoin than any product announcement so far from a major financial institution, but it has some traditional bank in there too.